"Cause that's how you talk to people?"

This grey is very confusing.

"So it was mostly that you weren't used to the internet? - that's how most people who want to talk to reds do it, we write to them on the internet. Less scary for everyone involved."

"... Oh. I didn't know you could do that."

Meelia will try to remember the internet in case it might be useful again some other time.

"You've talked to them??"

Prolly only to say mean things like the other Amentans but maybe Meelia will be wrong about that this time.

"Yeah, some. That's one of the reasons I applied for this posting, they wanted people who'd be - tolerant of the idea."

"Of talking to reds?"

"Yeah. I'm not sure what Kessa's deal is, but presumably he saw the same posting."

"What'd you talk to them about?"

"The reds? Uh, lots of stuff, I've known some of them for years. I've been trying to figure out if there's anything to be done that meets everybody's needs better than the thing that's been looking likeliest to happen. If you want to help them that could possibly be really good news depending on what you try."

"I do really want to help them! I don't know what to try at all cause I don't know what is wrong."

"Well my first piece of advice is that it very much doesn't help them if people who want to help them loudly announce this and then promptly get arrested for felonies. I'm not sure how to... interpret you... like, you look like an Amentan child but are actually untold hundreds of thousands of years old but in some ways you sort of act childlike and I'm not sure how much of that is your appearance coloring my impression... like, I don't know whether to interpret the way you approached this as immaturity or just your personality individually or simple ignorance or what."

"I sorta feel that about your species and how it handles reds. You're all really young."

"We are all really young but I'm not actually confident that's why we handle reds any particular way. The reds aren't any older. Amentan children aren't any worse about reds than the elderly. What... do you know about how we handle reds?"

"Oh, I meant your civ-ili-zation being young. Not each of you ind-iv-dually being young."

"Sometimes you yell at them and make them leave their homes and they're really really scared of you and you burnt down all their places and you keep them far away and you think there's something dirty about them that needs to be showered off but you don't seem sad about that for them and you don't seem to care about how hard the being 'polluted' thing sounds like for them."

"... Um. Didn't mean to make it sounds like you were doing those things. Just saw other Amentans doing those things."

"- okay. So, most of that is about right, it's true that there is something dirty about them that needs to be showered off - for other people, not them, they can't shower it off. Yelling at them is not actually that - special - like, people are particularly mean to reds sometimes but it's more common to just avoid them, and clean people get yelled at sometimes too. Uh, not all their places have been burnt down, what happened as I understand it was that they cleared out the district you'd been visiting because they were looking for you, and then there was a fire in the emptied district, and then they decided that since red population numbers are going down and small cities are starting to be able to do without them and they'd already moved out all those reds anyway they might as well burn the place down - to clean it and clear it, so they can build new stuff there. This is probably inconvenient for the reds but all of the specific ones you saw are, like, alive, as far as I know, they moved to other districts in neighboring cities. Also, reds mostly - not invariably but mostly - don't mind being polluted in the same way that other Amentans do. It's a genetic thing, they've been selected for it over time, and some of them are certainly miserable about them but typical reds don't - oh, or did you mean that it's hard for them because other people don't want them near them, I guess that's straightforwardly true but it's not something you can solve by - brute force, that'd just be torturing people."

"It's important to not ignore sad things even when you can't solve them. Really really important."

Meelia waits a few beats cause that's really important.

"Also, there was an Amentan who said he'd mercy-kill me if I were a red and not if I were orange, before he figured out I'm not any color. Doesn't feel like the normal type of mean." 

"- well, you wound up in the hospital, and reds can't go to the normal hospital. They have their own doctors but they're not very well equipped and don't have as much training or backup as the orange ones, and transporting you to one would have been a nightmare. He probably thought you were in a lot of pain and that if you were a red you wouldn't live anyway so it would be kinder to end the suffering, I don't actually think that's particularly awful though it does reflect some underlying awfulness."

"He could I have asked? I was moving and everything - if I was a red I woulda been able to answer."

"Are you sure? I would expect there to be some smoke inhalation issues even if you weren't badly burned."

"I was moving around a bunch and had just climbed over things and stuff. They coulda tried re-gard-less."

"... Also I might not understand Amentans super duper well but they didn't sound like they cared too much about mercy-killing a red."

"I think you should be much much more careful about assumptions like that, I think you are much more likely to jump to conclusions than have flashes of insight and the first thing is more likely to be dangerous than the second thing is to alert you to special opportunities, but sure, that's possible."

"That... makes sense and does sorta sound like the type of mistake that I make that gets me into trouble."

"Yeah. Maybe this has been fine for you in the past because you're immortal and so is everyone you know and there aren't that many of you and you didn't have much in the way of mass media? But mistakes can spiral out of control and can get people killed, now, so - adjust to be more conservative, I think, or at least get a second opinion before you make a move, I can be that second opinion or I can introduce you to reds on the internet."

"I think my friend Lucien would make a very good second opinion, and also a few of my other amalien friends. But also I really do want to talk to the reds! Also I guess you might be a good second opinion since you seen more reasonable than a lot of Amentans about red things maybe? But also I don't know you very well yet and don't know how much to trust you."

"Have you met 'a lot' of Amentans?"

"I think I've heard maybe ten Amentans talk about reds?"